This invention concerns an apparatus for feeding plastic containers having necks, in particular bottles, to a conveyor equipped with devices for individually gripping the containers by their necks, the gripping devices being spaced apart by a predetermined pitch and the containers being fed to the apparatus one after the other and separated by the same pitch.
In container-manufacturing and/or filling equipment, the containers are, according to wide-spread practice, transported by transfer wheels, of which numerous embodiments are known. However, since these wheels perform only a transfer function, they are not mechanically structured to support stresses, such as vertical stresses engendered, for example, by forcibly driving a mandrel into the necks of the containers supported by the wheels.
Moreover, in the manufacturing equipment ovens used to heat the plastic material of the containers, container transfer may be accomplished by disks containing recesses which grasp the containers and bring them into position beneath the moving mandrels. However, in these conventional pieces of equipment the mandrels travel rectilinearly; the containers must, therefore, be transferred within the area of rectilinear travel of the mandrels, thereby requiring significant space for the equipment.